HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021-03-23 TranscriptionPage 1
2. Melrose Court Sewer Improvements — Resolution approving project manual
and estimate of cost for the construction of the Melrose Court Sewer
Improvements Construction Project, establishing amount of bid security to
accompany each bid, directing City Clerk to post notice to bidders, and
Fixing time and place for receipt of bids.
1. Public Hearing (Deferred from 3/16/21)
Teague: I'm going to open the public hearing. And staff presentation please!
Welter: Looks like my screen share is disabled. Can I get screen sharing? Perfect! Hello,
I'm Joe Welter. I'm a Senior Engineer in the Engineering Division and I'm going
to be talking about the Melrose Court Sewer Project today. So this project is ... uh,
about four and a half years in the making. It was originally planned as a sanitary
sewer replacement project. The design started in November of 2016. We had a
public meeting March of 2018. I think it's important to mention that this project
started as a sanitary sewer replacement project. It was not meant to be a complete
street reconstruction project, but as we looked at the design constraints, as we
looked at the corridor, as we listened to public comments, and we found other
information that we discovered as the design progressed. The project got more
complicated and, um ... and we had to adjust the design to ... to adjust to the
parameters that we found. So the project is located, uh, Melrose Court, which is,
um, a couple blocks away from, uh, southeast of Kinnick Stadium and it's
immediately south of the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. This project
involved replacing an existing sanitary sewer pipe, which is a 16 -inch, uh, 6 -inch
pipe with a new 8 -inch and (mumbled) PVC pipe. The existing pipe and the
proposed pipe are pretty much running straight down the center of Melrose Court.
Existing pipe has sags in it and dips in it. Uh, the discharge pipes from the area
were constructed in the late 1800s or early 1900s, so it's a very old sewer line
that's going through here. The location of the sewer and the sags in the sewer
really prohibited us from doing, uh, rehabilitation, like lining the pipe or doing,
uh, trenchless, uh, installation of the pipe. And so really ended up with, um,
process of basically having to dig up the whole corridor to get at the pipe, take out
the old pipe, and put in a new pipe, and so it was trench work that needs to be
done. There will be new sanitary sewer services that will be installed from the
edges of the right-of-way to the edges of the easement. And ... we will, uh, and
we're relocating, um ... we're relocating, uh, two of the discharge pipes that
previously went under a building on the 220, 222 Melrose Court property. These
two pipes, uh, bisect that property and go underneath the building, the house, and
so this project looks to move those into a permanent easement. It's better for the
property and the building, and it'll be easier to access, maintain, and repair the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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public sanitary sewer and storm sewer in the future. The storm sewer's also being
improved on the north half of the project corridor. We are upsizing and changing
the material of the storm sewer. So we're going from 12 -inch pipe to a 15 -inch
pipe. There'll be a new outlet, which'll all be, uh, concrete, precast concrete, the
intakes and the ... the outlet. There'll also be an additional storm sewer intake,
which'11 help alleviate some of the flooding that has been reported in the
backyards of these properties. The existing right-of-way is only 25 -feet wide.
That's extremely narrow. If you think about a new street that we would construct
in a subdivision, that would be 26- or 28 -feet wide. So a new street in a new
subdivision would already be wider than this entire right-of-way is. And so we
are forced with trying to figure out what to do with that, and so we're ... we're
putting back in a 25 -foot wide street and a 5 -foot wide sidewalk, so we're ... we're
paving from right-of-way line to right-of-way line. Where we disturb and where
we remove, uh, driveways and within the easements we will be putting in new
driveway, driveway aprons, and ... and the driveway pavement. The storm sewer
will discharge into the, uh, edge of, uh, the ... in between the 223 and 331 Lucon
Drive... location. We received a lot of public comments before this meeting, as
well as, uh, earlier in the project about relocation of power lines underground.
(mumbled) like everyone to know that this was evaluated. This would be our
preference to ... to do that, and City staff looked at this. Um, in 2016 dollars, when
this was evaluated, the relocation of the power lines, off of the poles and
underground, was, uh, approximated by Mid American at the time as $160,000
that the City of Iowa City would need to pay. The removal of the aerials from the
houses and the relocation of the pedestals and transformer boxes was roughly
another $90,000 and so when we had originally budgeted this project at $300,000,
another $250,000 on top of that is ... is roughly doubling the cost of the project.
Um ... what we're doing with this project does not precli... preclude us from
relocating those power lines underground in the fixture. We received a lot of
comments, especially during the casement process, as well as during other times
in the design process about the ability of residents to get in and out of their prof...
properties during this... project. Um, because of the fact that we're basically
tearing out the roadway and replacing the roadway and... and it is going to be a
fairly disruptive project because of the narrowness of the right-of-way, and so we
have worked with the consultant and we'll be working with the contractors as
they bid on this, and the eventual awarded contractor. (mumbled) divided this
project up into eight phase... eight phases, and this is intended to mini... minimize
disruption to the residents, and so the contractor will be required to maintain
access to the driveways throughout construction. We communicated this, um,
quite frequently during the acquisition, the temporary construction easement
process, that ... uh, for those residents and those owners of properties that were
advocating for their ...for their tenants, that we would be working with the
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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contractor to maintain that access. So at times this might be over gravel. It won't
always be over pavement, and it will take some coordination and some patience
on the everyone's part. Contractor will be in charge of getting the vehicles in and
out of their construction area. At times residents will need to wait. The contractor
may need to move some equipment, they (mumbled) finish up something that
they're doing, and so ... um ... so ... so we just want to communicate we're doing
everything we can to try to minimize that disruption to the residents. This is our
schedule and costs. The bid opening, uh, will be .... we bumped that back a week
since this public hearing got bumped back a week. Um, so April 13th will be that.
We intend to start in the beginning of May, have substantial completion done
before the football season kicks off. This is right ... very close to Kinnick Stadium,
and a lot of, uh, a lot of people use this corridor, uh, to get to the stadium, as well
as to do some of their, uh, pregame and post -game activities, and so we ... we have
emphasized that we want this project, all items, to be done by the end of August.
There will be a 30 -day period in between the (mumbled) final completion. This is
very typical on all of our projects. In this particular project, we require
everything, all of the bid items, to be completed, but we still have that 30 -day
period for the contractor to do some cleanup items or some small punch list items.
We have specifically stated in the contract documents in the project manual, the
plan notes, and specifications that any work after the substantive completion date,
that'd be August 25t', it'll be limited to week days. No work will occur on home
football game weekends, and after that August 25th date, the roadway and
sidewalk must be fully opened to the traffic by pedestrians and vehicles. Our
estimated construction costs of $525,000, again, that shows a lot of things that
we've added into this project, um, those new discharge pipes, getting the pipes out
from underneath that ... that building. Um, our original budget was $300,000. Uh,
so you can show, I mean we're showing as staff that we really did try to figure out
ways to make this reasonable. We looked at dividing it up into different, um,
halves. We thought that that would be more disruptive to the corridor, to basically
do half of the project one year and then a year or two later do the other half of the
project, and so, uh, we decided to go forward with the... with the whole corridor,
put in the new sewers, and then repave the corridor. I want to thank Anderson
Bogert, who was our design consultant, um, that worked through many design
changes and really went above and beyond to prepare and reprepare documents as
this project evolved and as things changed on the project. So I really want to say
a big thank you to all the staff that helped at Anderson Bogert, and uh, there's my
contact information if people would like to get a hold of me about this project.
So ... back to .... back to you, Mayor!
Teague: Thank you, Joe. Council .... any questions for Joe?
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special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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Thomas: I had, uh, one...a question on the, um, with the new ...street section, will the ... the
existing poles no longer be in that west sidewalk?
Welter: We are asking the contractor to keep those poles in ... in place during the
construction and so we're not going to be moving the poles. We're going to try to
keep those in place throughout the construction and the sidewalk would, um,
roughly be in about the same place it's in today.
Teague: So the cost went from 300,000 to 525 and that's not including, um, the
underground work, um ... correct?
Welter: That's correct. Yep, that's correct.
Teague: And you mentioned that, um, in the future this can be done, what ... the work being
done now doesn't preempt, you know, that from .... from being done in the future,
I guess. My question would be, is staff planning to do this in the future or is there
something that you need from Council, um, on ... on this matter?
Welter: Well, we do have another project that is, um, on the CIP list, on the unfunded list
at this point, for Brookland Park. That would be west of Melrose Court, south of
this project corridor. So there would be an opportunity. That is intended to be a
whole reconstruction. There are some storm water issues there and some, uh,
sewer issues and, urn ... so that there would be a possibility maybe with that project
to go back at that time and do that. Um .... at this point we ... we have not planned
to do any, uh, underground location of the power lines, uh... but again, that's not
something that we can't pursue in the future.
Thomas: Is ... is the, uh, is the possibility of a, um, undergrounding funded by the property
owners an option? Has that ever been done here?
Welter: I'm not sure about that. I don't .... I don't know if we've ever done that before,
and what that might look like, uh.... one of the things to consider is ... many of the
properties along this corridor are owned, but, um, but not resided in by those
owners. Uh, so I'm not sure how that would change that, um, conversation. If
you were going through a more traditional residential neighborhood, you could
get a lot more support maybe for an approach like that. But with many of the
properties being leased out, rented out, I'm not ... I'm not sure how that would
work, and how much, urn ... how much support you would get for that.
Weiner: I wonder if you could describe the process that ... when you're going to put
something on the CII' that you usually would go through in order to include
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
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undergrounding of...of...of electrical wires generally, um, or if that's not ... maybe
that's a question better, uh, answered by Geoff. I'm not sure.
Welter: The... generally when a project goes into the CIP program, it's identified for its
primary purposes. This project was identified to fix a very old sanitary sewer that
had deficiencies. The sewer needs to be fixed. Um, other projects get put into the
CIP to be a complete reconstruction of the corridor. Um, to ... to really look at this
corridor to .... to reconstruct it was going to require extra right-of-way to be
acquired, and that was evaluated actually in 2017 and 2018, and the issue with
this corridor being so narrow, 25 -feet, um, is ... and ... and on both sides, both the
east and west side of the roadway, um, there's quite a bit of change between the
street level and the front door, the main entrances of the buildings. That there was
a lot of, uh, issues, design issues, that were very hard to get over. Um, the...
almost all of the properties on the west end were going to have to have retaining
walls, um, the ... the front entrance walks, which almost every house has,
were ... were going to be, uh.... uh, significantly impacted. The driveway grades
were going to have to be, uh, changed quite a bit, and so as we looked at that,
again, it just .... it just felt way outside of what the intended project was to be,
which was to fix a sanitary sewer that needed to be fixed. Um, I don't know,
Janice, if that answers your question, but that's the particular case on this project.
Weiner: Um, that's really helpful. I guess what I'm sort of looking for is when ... when the
City is .... in general looks at this, what ... how do they decide when they're going
to, uh, bury the lines, because it's at our cost. I mean it sounds to me like what
one of the things you're saying it sort of is part of the ... it has, it's normally is part
of a complete reconstruction ... as well as these other issues that you're mentioning.
Welter: Yeah, I think .... I think with a complete reconstruction, that's always ... and really,
it's probably always the preferred option on every project. Um, unfortunately
with this project, by the time we really figured out what needed to be done for the
original intent of the project, you know, by the time ... and again, 20...2016 dollars
it was $250,000. If you add 3% to that every year, then today's dollars that'd
probably be closer to 300,000. So you add $300,000 to a $525,000 project and
you're adding 30% on top of the project costs. Um, so ... and again, it's not that
we .... it's not that we wouldn't as Engineering prefer the ... the lines to be buried as
well. We would. Um, it just....it just didn't fit into the original concept of this
project, um, but I would say yes. A complete reconstruction project's always
going to look at that, um, and have that in mind that ... that the power lines,
the ... the other private utilities, as well as the water and the sewers, the public
utilities would all be looked at in a complete street reconstruction to evaluate what
needs to change and what needs to be improved, and that's a little bit different
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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when you're just looking at trying to do a utility project. If you're just trying to
replace the water mains, if you're just trying to replace the sanitary sewer, the
storm sewer, that has a very different look to it.
Taylor: Along the lines of Councilor Weiner's questioning, I mean obviously.... quite
obviously this project needs to be done and I'm in favor of the project being done,
uh, seeing the age, uh, that's shocking, uh, the age of this line, but that is an older
part of the community (garbled) but I'm .... I'm disappointed in that phrase "in the
future," uh, because we all know what that can possibly mean, and then you're
talking about disruption, that this is going to be a very disruptive project. Well,
you turn around and somewhere down the line need to disrupt it again to put
those ... those power lines underground. That just doesn't make sense to me! It
just doesn't seem logical, uh, but I'm wondering also along the lines of Janice's
questioning, I mean do we put some kind of a placeholder in our budget, uh, that
would fund that eventually, because it's only going to get more expensive, and my
preference would be just to do it now and get it over with.
Fruin: Yeah, if I could jump in here. I ... I think, um, you have to kind of back off, uh,
back up and see a ... a bigger picture with this too. Um, you know, we're talking
about, I don't know, maybe a block and a half reconstruction here at a quarter
million dollars. You can imagine, there's probably lots of neighborhoods in town
that would like to see their utility lines buried, and we would like to see those
buried too, but you get into a .... a .... a scope of a ... of an issue with overhead utility
lines. You're talking tens of millions of dollars, easily, across the .... across the,
uh, the city. Um .... and ... and so and I think if you, you know, if the Council were
to want to get more aggressive with burying utility lines, urn ... uh, I think you're
going to want to be, uh, you know, develop some type of assessment, uh... uh,
system for a utility line program like that. So, you know, this neighborhood
would probably be a top candidate because poles are located, you know, in ... in
conflict with pedestrian amenities. But you'd also want to look at, you know,
what's the risk to the lines with stone damage, um, and ... and what are some of the
other, um, concerns that those poles, uh, may have. So the ... the concern I have
about, urn .... um, you know, immediately just saying `we'll go back in and do
this,' is ... is, you know, you're probably going to .... you're probably going to easily
spend not only the 300, but if you look at the public comments that you received,
some of them are from .... areas outside of the ... this project area. So that $250,000
cost, which is now 300, is going to get to 400, 500, 600 by the time you're
meeting everybody, and um, I just don't ... I just don't know that that's... that's
going to ... to be the best approach. We do have an annual budget line for burying
power lines. We combine them with ... with current projects that we have. Um, we
typically focus on, uh, arterial, collector streets, where the risk of an outage is
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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greatest to the greatest number of people. Um, so you've seen that with Dubuque
Street, with ... with Gilbert Street, with American Legion Road that's coming up.
Those... those tend to be where we focus, um, again, I think if Council wants to get
into a neighborhood system, we probably need to take a step back and think a
little bit more systematically about how we want to go about doing that and how
we're going to fund it.
Dilkes: I would just add briefly that, um, the temporary... the easements that we needed for
this project were acquired with the representation that this project would be done
before the football season started. So we need to stick to that schedule at this
point.
Bergus: Geoff, just to follow up on, um, John Thomas' question about some kind of, um,
assessment for the property owners. Joe, I appreciate what you're saying, that
maybe there wouldn't be buy -in for that, but is there even a mechanism for that?
Fruin: Um, I'm not aware of one. Uh, I'd have to do probably a little research unless
Eleanor knows that question from past research, but I'm certainly not aware of,
uh, an assessment on a ... on a .... utility line undergrounding project.
Dilkes: Yeah, I mean the idea of doing a special assessment, which I don't think Iowa
City's done in .... 40 years or something (mumbled) might be a possibility but
there ... I'm not sure that that's a process that would be applicable when we're
talking about contributing the cost of the ... of the undergrounding to the utilities.
So something we'd have to look at.
Bergus: Thank you.
Welter: Then again, I can't talk to ... I would add on, I can't talk to, you know, necessarily
every project in town, but it's ... it is a very busy corridor. So the other ...the other
thing to consider is where are those underground lines going to go in this
particular corridor. You've got fiber optic cables in ... on this side. You've got gas
mains on the other side, um, so ... it's ... this particular corridor is very problematic
because it's so narrow. It's such a tight corridor, um, and ... and how do you ... how
do you do that and where ... where do you make everything fit. Not to say that
that's impossible, not to say that, again, that that can't be done in the future, um,
but it is a very complex, um, complicated corridor.
Bergus: So in this one there's already undergrounded, for example, fiber where ... so it
wouldn't be just taking everything off the poles and putting it underground.
There's already some there?
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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Welter: Well if you take ... if you take the poles away, if you take the poles away, then
everybody's got to find a space underground. So ... and everybody's got to find
some place to go, and so there, um, there are some overhead, some underground
utilities in this corridor, um, but again, anything that's up on the poles, if you take
the poles off, they have to find a place as well. Um, and if it was a normal, more
normal right-of-way, where you got some parkway and you got some areas to
work with, uh, that gets ... there, those... discussions with all the utilities get a little
bit easier.
Bergus: Makes sense! Thank you.
Thomas: One ... one other question I had would ... would be if the poles are going to remain,
and, uh, remain in the same location in the sidewalk, do we have the minimum
clearance on the sidewalk with respect to access (mumbled) an obstruction...
which ... which would be the pole?
Welter: John, we just talked about that yesterday a little bit more, and, uh, there ... the
current existing situation, uh... and ... and the proposed situation would not
necessarily be all that different, um, so we're not really putting in anything that's
different than what it is today. Uh, to get that 4 -foot, um, that would be required
for ADA, and is I think what you're referring to, um, it...it would be, um ... it
would be very tight. There ... there could be some places where we're under 4 -
foot.
Thomas: My understanding is that, uh, at an obstruction, the minimum would be 3 -feet.
Rather than, you know, the 4 -feet would be in a standard condition, but when you
encounter a pole or something of that sort, my recollection was that you needed a
minimum of 3 -feet at the obstruction. So I'm .... I'm sensing from what you just
said that we have at least 3 -feet.
Welter: I believe that we'll be ... we'll be pretty close to that, yeah. It'll be tight, but I
don't ... I don't believe that we necessarily have existing conditions that are under
that, and again, the proposed conditions that we're proposing are really not that
much different than the existing conditions. It's always hard to guarantee that in
the sense that ... um ... and there's... there's wildcards in all construction projects.
So ... but the intention is not to make the situation any worse than it is at this point
from, um, accessibility around those obstructions.
Thomas: Okay, thanks!
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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Teague: All right. I'm going to ask if anyone from the public would like to address this
topic. If so, please raise your hand. Welcome, Dan! And I ask that... yeah,
welcome, Dan!
Kauble: Hi, um, I am Dan Kauble and I live near the VA, and since tonight's agenda, um,
is only focused on discussions about road and sewer repairs and it doesn't really
have any other avenue for public comment, I think I'm going to be talking about
sewers, and specifically I will be discussing the citywide sewer where advocates
for racial justice are currently drowning in a political quagmire. I request that the
City spend part of tonight's formal Council meeting focusing on repairing that
sewer, and if it needs to be repaired much more than the others. In the wake of
last week's vote to suspend the TRC, I have a few comments about how to make
this ... the TRC, um, better and improve its future. Um, I would like to reiterate
some of the points I made last week (both talking)
Teague: Hey, Dan (both talking) Dan?
Kauble: Yes?
Teague: So this has to be related to the topic at hand.
Kauble: Well I mean it's about sewers, so I mean it's ... I think that if you guys aren't
allowing a public discussion for ...this is one of the most pressing issues facing the
community, and I think that there has to be at some point tonight (mumbled) you
guys should allow the public input on this, because I mean a lot of people, this is
their reality, this is what they're fighting for. Everybody has points that they want
to make about this. (both talking)
Teague: Is this about (both talking) sewers?
Kauble: Well, it's about the fact that the City is curren... I mean res... countless residents
are .... are stuck in a sewer of racism. I mean, this city is a sewer to them because
a lot of the injustices that (both talking)
Dilkes: Mayor, this is not your main...
Teague: Yes! Dan, thank you. I'm going to have to cut you off now, but thank you (both
talking)
Kauble: I ... I will....
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.
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Teague: Anyone else like to address this topic? Seeing no one, I'm going to close the
public hearing. Could I get a motion to approve please?
2. Consider a Resolution (Deferred from 3/16/21)
Mims: So moved, Mims.
Taylor: Second, Taylor (garbled)
Teague: Council discussion?
Mims: I'm in support of the project. I ... I certainly understand the concern and the desire
to get all the utilities undergrounded. Um, and I ... but I think this represents an
issue. I think as the City Manager laid out pretty well. This would be, um, this'd
be a really expensive project, and it's one that will be wanted and desired across
the community. So I think if we're going to take on that, um, attempt to
underground our utilities, we really need to do it with a citywide, uh, mindset of
how we're gonna work our way across the community and how we're going to
prioritize what areas, and how we would get the funding to go with it. Otherwise
I think ... it becomes who's .... who's the squeakiest wheel, um, in terms of getting
these kinds of improvements in their neighborhood.
Bergus: Yeah, I'm in favor of this project. I think it's unfortunate that the undergrounding
can't occur in a reasonable way. I'm satisfied that staff did a lot of, um, trying to
make that happen in a way that was feasible in this neighborhood. What really
struck me was the narrowness of the total right-of-way, and given all the
construction that's happening, um, without acquiring additional, you know,
widening of that right-of-way, it ... I guess it .... it's very unfortunate, but it makes
sense to me that we'll, um, make the situation as best we can even if we can't
underground the utilities there.
Teague: Any other comments? Roll call please. Motion passes 7-0.
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council
special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.